Mike Lupica brings the class. In his A-Rod column he plays the same “A-Rod just needs to go away” tune as everyone else at the Daily News. Then, when explaining the options the Yankees have, drops this gem about the MLB Players Association:

Or — this appears to be even more of a longshot — they want the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, to hit him with a drug suspension so they can start exploring ways to void his contract, even though the Major League Baseball Players Association will fight to protect guaranteed money in baseball the way gun nuts protect their guns.

Get that? A union, whose sole function is to protect the collectively bargained-for rights of its membership, is the equivalent of “gun nuts.” I’m gonna go on a limb and say, based on past quasi-political things Lupica has written, that he is not exactly the staunchest Second Amendment guy, so in addition to equating the MLBPA to “nuts” he’s probably implicitly saying here that guaranteed contracts are illegitimate and unnecessary.

I also assume that he would be totally cool in giving up some of the money in his contract with the Daily News if he suddenly became unpopular.

Anyway, gotta hand it to the Daily News these past few days. Aside from utterly ignoring reality with respect to A-Rod’s contract situation and being wholly uncritical of their Yankees sources, they have done a bang-up job ratcheting the rhetoric to a ridiculous degree.